Physicist recognized with national award

Cundiff

Steven Cundiff, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has received the 2011 William F. Meggers Award from the Optical Society of America (OSA).

The Meggers Award recognizes outstanding work in spectroscopy, the study and measurement of interactions between light and matter. Cundiff, a fellow of JILA, a joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder, is cited for "contributions to the field of ultrafast spectroscopy of semiconductors, including multidimensional Fourier transform techniques, and for contributions to the development of femtosecond frequency comb technology."

Meggers was a prominent scientist who worked at NIST (then called the National Bureau of Standards) from 1914 to 1958 and is considered by many to be the founder of the American field of spectroscopy.